Map of a casemate for a planned fortress on Crab Island
Desmaretz, P.D.
Title Leupe: Profil eener Cazematte van het geprojecteerde Dessin over de versterking van 't Crabben Eyland in Rio de Berbice.
This profile is part of a plan for a fort on the Crab Island.
A plan similar to this one was already designed to no avail by P.M. Osterlin before 1735 (see VEL1611), which had never been executed. Following sustained pressure from private planters in Berbice, the directors finally turned, in 1738, to the Society of Surinam with the request that the French engineer, Pierre-Dominique Desmaretz, then responsible for the construction of Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, be sent to Berbice for some time so that he could come up with a new plan for the fortification of the island. Desmaretz travelled there the following year and produced the plan shown here.
This is a profile of the casemate of the fortress.
Despite the cost-saving that this would have provided in relation to the previous plan, even this version was found to be too expensive and so, as in the past, Crab Island remained unfortified.
Scale-bar of 7 Rhineland rods = 325 ‘strepen’.
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